The league and club AGMs have finished, and Wellington College is again available after the summer break. What does this mean for Crowthorne Chess Club? In many ways, it’s business as normal, although we have increased the number of teams we are entering in the Border and Berkshire Leagues.

We will continue to meet for social chess on Thursdays at Pinewood as usual.

Crowthorne Junior chess resumes meeting on Wednesdays from 6:30 at the Monro Pavilion.

Team Entries
We have entered a variety of teams in the Border and Berkshire leagues. These are:

Surrey Border League
• Crowthorne A, B, C :- standard play divisions 1, 4, 5
• Crowthorne RA, RB :- rapid play divisions 1 & 2
• Crowthorne HA :- Haslemere Cup
All 5 board teams.

Berkshire League
• Crowthorne A, B, C :- divisions 1, 2, 3. (5-board teams)
• Crowthorne PPCA :- Premier Precision Cup (PPC) (6-board team)

We will also have two teams in the 4-Nations Chess League (4NCL) and in the 4NCL online competition.

Club Championship
Following last year’s success, Robert is kindly organising the Club Championship again this year. You can follow progress of this tournament throughout the year on the Club Championship page, and on the ECF LMS page.

This year’s Khyber Cup, held on Saturday, had all the elements needed for a perfect Khyber Cup event.

We were hosted by Harriet who kindly opened up her house to the throng of players, and the play took place to the luxurious backdrop of the spacious and glorious garden which she shares with her neighbours.

Even the variable English summer weather played its part, with clear blue skies changing to dark heavy clouds, teasing us with the lightest sprinkling of rain, only to revert back to bright and hot sunshine, and this repeated throughout the day. But we remained well protected from both light showers and bright sun by Bob’s huge dome of a marquee.

A bumper crop of competitors took part (20), including 3 guest players from Godalming chess club. The play was as hard fought and competitive as ever, with lower graded players taking on the stronger ones and, even though not often taking points from them, at least giving them competitive and challenging games.

But ultimately it was the stronger players who came out on top. Uniquely in Khyber Cup history, we had a four-way tie for first place, with four very strong club stalwarts all scoring 4/5 and only losing to, or drawing with, other top club players. These four winners were: Derek, Harvey, Ken and Richard. Congratulations to all of them. Four names to squeeze on to the trophy, three of whom have won many times before (three years in a row for Derek), with Harvey the new name on the shield.

At the other end of the results table Tom, one of the visiting players, took home the bottle of Kingpin wine.

Thanks to all who played and made this year’s Khyber Cup so memorable, and thank you Harriet for your generous offer to host the event …

… and many thanks to Jonathan, our club secretary, for organising the event.

Crowthorne Chess Club’s first evening at the new venue (the Monro Pavilion at Wellington College) proved very successful, and seemed popular with all the players. It is easier to get get to, and is closer to important facilities (such as the coffee shop/bar at the nearby sports centre) than our previous location. Some pictures:

The evening was only slightly marred (from Crowthorne’s perspective) by Camberley, the visiting team, beating us convincingly in the Rapidplay League, but apart from that all went well!

Just a quick update to point out that the About Us page has been updated with the directions to our new home, the Monro Pavilion.

As from Wednesday 19th April, we have a new location within Wellington College! We are moving to the Monro Pavilion near the Wellington Health & Fitness Centre. This will be our regular venue on Wednesdays for the junior club (6:30pm) and for matches (7:30pm). More detailed information and directions will appear shortly in the “About Us” page, and will be provided to visiting match captains in due course.

We are very grateful to Wellington College for arranging this new venue, which has a number of advantages over the present rooms.

We continue to meet on Thursdays at the Pinewood Centre for social chess.

More details to follow soon, in the meantime here’s a pic of the Monro Pavilion:

We wish all Crowthorne Chess Club members a Happy New Year!

We will be meeting as usual at Pinewood on Thursday (Jan 5th). See you there!